


like ashes in the wind

by scarsandstars



Series: fire and ashes [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Related, Canon Rewrite, Depressing, Eventual Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sad, Self-Esteem Issues, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unrequited, mlm author
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-09-02 21:56:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16795507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarsandstars/pseuds/scarsandstars
Summary: Shiro is his sunrise. Always has been. He always will be.But he has no business feeling the way he does, aching the way he does, wanting the way he does. He's Keith. He's only Keith.  And Shiro is meant to be among the stars.





	like ashes in the wind

**Author's Note:**

> hello i come bearing over 7.000 words of pure unadultered angst and i hope u enjoy suffering as much as i enjoyed writing it. 
> 
> there are hints to sexual activities but they are not explicit, and keith is 18 when they happen, just as a heads up.
> 
> there will be a happy ending in the second part, so stay tuned.

"The thought of you kissing me won't leave my head."

The words on the page feel like they’re mocking him. The loops and lines and their shameful, frantic slope. He thought it might be healthy to let it out, somehow. To put all of it somewhere outside of the mess inside his head. He naively thought that, maybe, if he wrote it on a page and burnt it, the wind would take away the heartache and shame along with the ashes. He hoped. Because all he had were blurry hopes and foggy dreams, and a black lighter in his hand. 

So he stands outside the dull, grey building as the sun sets, watching its light paint the sky orange and purple and bright pink, while the lines of black ink continue to mock him. Writing them down had made them real. It had pushed them towards the surface in a way he hadn't expected. If they had been an itch underneath his skin that he could ignore before, writing them down had turned them into scars. Angry red, crooked, blatant, ugly scars. Covering his body from head to toe. His last hope was in the ashes.

"I've never seen eyes like yours, or a smile like yours. I've never seen someone light up the whole room the way you do. Sometimes I can barely stand to look at you. It feels like staring straight into the sun."

Shiro was a star, in almost every sense of the word. Something about him made people love him—everyone seemed to love him, or be in awe of him at the very least. His coy smiles, his smooth voice, the way he could fly ships across the sky like he was always meant to be among the clouds and not stuck to the ground. He was as bright and warm as a star. He was beautiful and wondrous, a breathtaking sight, a soothing glow in the darkness. He was as unreachable and untouchable as a star.

"Sometimes I wish you wouldn't touch me. I wish you wouldn't squeeze my shoulder or hug me, because I want you so bad it hurts. I want you, all of you and I don't know what to do with myself. Sometimes it burns when you touch the back of my neck."

Keith holds this sheet of paper and flicks the lighter, and if he tries hard enough, he's sure that the burning feeling in his eyes will stop before it turns into tears. His jaw feels sore with how hard he's been clenching it for who knows how long. The flame swallows the corner instantly, and he watches the white burn into brown and black, the fire change from blue to orange to yellow, and when he feels its heat close to his fingertips, he lets it fall to the ground. He watches it burn, waiting, expecting, hoping. The final words he wrote are the last ones to disappear. 

"I love you. I love you."

A gust of wind lifts the ashes and makes them swirl almost delicately before they disappear into the horizon. He has to wipe his eyes with his sleeve, then, because there was no comfort in the fire. No relief in the ashes. He has to walk back to his room with the same heaviness in his heart, with the same emptiness in his stomach, with the same tightness in his jaw.

He was a fool to hope.

*****

There is a strange satisfaction in writing. He can't explain it, and he can't help feeling stupid, but he finds comfort in it and he will take whatever he can get just to make it through the day.

Sometimes he writes full pages, one night after another. Sometimes he writes one word every two weeks.

Sometimes he sneaks out in the middle of the night to burn them. Sometimes he scratches the notebook so hard with his pen that it rips the paper. Sometimes he tears the letters to shreds, and sometimes he hides them under his pillow.

He can still remember the day everything changed. The sky looked dark and grey outside the windows of the mess hall, and there was thunder rumbling every now and then that made the younger cadets scream obnoxiously, and some of the older ones yelled at them to shut up or outright laughed at how childish they were behaving. And Keith was eating by himself at a table by the entrance, the way he always did. 

It was September. Around the time his dad had died in a fire, almost five years ago. He was only twelve when it happened, and it felt like something between a lifetime and a breath ago. 

Shiro stood next to him and touched his shoulder, in that way he always did, gentle and reassuring but also a little awkward. He smiled down at Keith, something warm and bright in the middle of that grey day, like a single ray of sunshine bursting through the heavy clouds, and Keith's heart skipped a beat.

"Hey, Keith. Is something wrong?" 

He’d always been grateful for Shiro. He wasn't the best at showing it, but it was all there. Since Shiro bailed him out of juvie for stealing his car, and then never brought it up again.

He shrugged. He said he was fine.

"Let's go ride the bikes after lunch," Shiro said with a secretive smile--for all people thought of him as the golden boy from the garrison, not many knew of his love for "borrowing" hover bikes and riding them through the desert. "Clear your head up a bit, yeah?"

"Yeah. Sure."

Shiro smiled again. He squeezed Keith's shoulder and left to go sit at another table with some officers and Adam. Keith watched Shiro rub Adam's shoulders before sitting down next to him, and Keith felt his heart twisting around itself for the first time. 

He didn't know how many times were yet to come. He didn't know he'd lay awake staring at the ceiling countless nights after, replaying scenes in his head that all boiled down to the same fact: Shiro was in love with Adam, Adam was in love with Shiro. All he knew that day was that something inside him had changed, shifted when Shiro touched Adam and shattered when they rode the hover bikes in the rain, when he forgot the memories and the loss and the heartache because they were laughing, and all Keith wished was for Shiro to be with him, like this, forever. He watched Shiro dive off the cliff and he stood on his bike by the edge. "I love him," was what he thought. 

Then, later, they had to leave the hover bikes in their place and go back to the gloomy day. Shiro said he hoped Keith was feeling a little better. Keith said he did, and he wasn't lying, not entirely, and he watched Shiro walk away from him and disappear down the hallway to go back to his business. To go back to Adam. 

Keith hadn't paid that much attention to them before, but after that day it was impossible not to. After that day, he couldn't stop watching them. 

They shared discreet, intimate gazes and smiles with secret meanings only the other could decipher. They casually touched each other when they met in hallways. They left together on their days off and every now and then they gave each other quick pecks on the lips, away from everyone else, before going their separate ways. And the more he watched them, the more Keith wished he could take Adam's place. Be the one Shiro smiled at that way, be the one Shiro came back to every night, be the one Shiro kissed. But he was just a kid. Shiro was the star pilot of the Galaxy Garrison in love with the young, accomplished, brilliant professor, and Keith was just a stupid kid.

It made him angry. It made him act out. It made him find boys to kiss and touch and pretend he could stop loving Shiro the way he did if they bit his lips hard enough. It made him find boys to fight and pretend he could stop thinking about Shiro the way he did if he hurt his knuckles bad enough. Nothing ever worked.

It made Shiro look at him with sadness in his eyes, every time they happened to call him like they did that first time he punched James in the face. But he vouched for Keith, still, every time.

The last time Shiro was there to save him, he took Keith into the city to have a cup of coffee and talk. He wanted to know what was going on, but Keith refused to speak. Shiro didn't push him. He just changed the subject to something pointless, some goings on at the garrison or some funny thing that had happened in the officers' common room that made Keith laugh. 

Keith remembers Shiro's arms crossed on the table and the smell of his strong espresso filling his nostrils, and how horribly sweet his own drink was. To this day, he isn't sure if what made him sick was the aggressive sweetness of the whipped cream or Shiro's words.

"Adam asked me to marry him." He smiled into his tiny cup and there was a light blush on his face, across the bridge of his nose. "I said yes. He's thinking we could do it later in the year."

"Oh." Keith couldn't speak because he was nauseated. Because his stomach hurt and his hands were sweating, and he was too focused on trying to blink back some stupid tears.

"I'm happy," Shiro said, and god, he looked it. He was beaming. It was almost like there was a halo around his head, like light was coming from within him. Like he was the brightest star in the sky. 

Keith had to excuse himself and ran to the bathroom to throw up. Shiro drove them back, after, and rubbed Keith's shoulders once or twice in an attempt to make him feel better after he parked the car.

"You can do so much, Keith. You have such a great brain, you just have to stop shaking it around like that and focus. There's so many great things in you. Don't forget that. I have faith in you." 

He smiled. He didn't wait to hear a reply from Keith, because he knew better. So he just smiled and went his way. 

And Keith, well, he decided he would let himself cry in his bed that night and get it over with, to go on with his life like nothing happened the very next morning. He tried. He really tried. 

*****

The announcement of the Kerberos mission being greenlit doesn't take anyone by surprise. Officers at the garrison had been discussing it for as long as Keith had been there. He remembers them mentioning adjustments and recalculations and costs and new budgets and a whole lot of things he didn't really care for. But he does care about the crew announcement. 

He's surprised to hear that Matt Holt is joining his father on the mission, since he's sure Matt can't be that much older than him. Is he maybe 18? Maybe 19? It makes Keith feel a pang of jealousy that Matt is going out on his first mission to space when they're practically the same age, but he guesses that's just what happens when you're a genius scientist instead of a training pilot who still has disciplinary issues. 

Shiro seems gloomy, and Keith can't manage to get to talk to him for a few days. He only sees him in passing, or from a distance, frowning and serious like there was a heavy black cloud hanging over his head at all times. He waves at Keith every now and then with a crushing, sad smile. He doesn't approach Keith to talk or even say hello like he used to, not even in the mess hall. Keith would be lying if he said it didn't hurt. 

Adam doesn't look much better, either. He teaches one of Keith's classes and Keith can see something in the way his jaw clenches when a student brings up the mission. No one can stop talking about it and Adam is visibly struggling to keep his cool—he's usually relatively laid back and calm, but every motion of his makes him look like a ticking time bomb every time Kerberos is mentioned. His voice gets rough when he asks students to keep quiet so that he can continue. He carries his books like he's gripping them as hard as he can to let out anger or frustration on them. He sets his coffee mug down on the desk way too hard when he hears a student gushing about what an amazing pilot Shiro is and how he's obviously going to be the chosen one for Kerberos, and raises his voice to continue with the lecture. 

Keith watches. 

He sneaks around every now and then to listen to things he has no business listening to. Gossip and discussions coming from senior pilots and officers and instructors. He hears bits and pieces but nothing is enough to get the full picture. He writes about missing Shiro, missing the goofy jokes he made and missing the hover bikes. He misses Shiro's smile. He misses seeing the sun shine in his eyes in the middle of the desert. 

Shiro looks sad, down, tired, confused—Keith can't even tell, but it makes him want to hold Shiro more than ever before. He writes that too. How he wants to hold him and comfort him and kiss him, and how stupid he feels for even imagining it. He's just a hopeless case Shiro took pity on, maybe. A teenage delinquent, a smart-ass, a mess of a person who has no business feeling the way he does, aching the way he does, wanting the way he does. He's Keith. He's only Keith. And Shiro is meant to be among the stars. 

*****

He sees Shiro walking next to Sam Holt down the aisle, hurried, while Keith is supposed to walk to class. To Adam's class, that started five minutes ago. But he doesn't care. He follows Shiro and Commander Holt very quietly and at a safe distance, because Shiro looks like he's walking to the gallows. It doesn't take long for Keith to figure out why. He knows it the second Shiro says the word "Admiral."

He listens to them talk for a few minutes. Then it all comes crashing down on him, the Admiral's voice hitting him like a ton of bricks. 

"This man is sick," she says. 

It feels like the air got punched out of him, like his insides flipped entirely on themselves and his heart forgot how to beat; like his body didn't know how to contain his feelings and just shut down. Like something was torn apart at his very core. 

He doesn't bother listening to much more after that. Even if he wanted to, he's sure he wouldn't be able to process anything that was being said. He walks around the corner from Shiro's office and goes back to class after a second of debating: would it hurt more if he snuck out of the base, would it hurt less if he let another boring lecture numb his mind? It's probably easier to just sit in class. 

He's twenty minutes late and Adam doesn't even care. He looks up at Keith from behind his desk, looking pale and weary, and there's something in his eyes that Keith can't figure out. For a second, he is sure that Adam will lose his temper and yell at him, kick him out of the classroom or send him to Iverson's office. But Adam does nothing. He shakes his head for the briefest second and makes a motion with his hand for Keith to walk in, and so he does. 

It almost feels like he and Adam share something now. But it feels so wrong to think of it like that. It feels wrong to be scared and angry, and so god damn hurt. He doesn't think he has a right to feel like someone stomped on his heart with an iron boot, and yet here he is, looking out the window at the incoherently sunny day. At the blue sky, at the desert, at the clouds. 

Loss is a strange thing. It's something Keith can't figure out, he can't isolate it and throw it away as he'd like to. He can't get on a ship and fly away from it, he can't blast it with any weapon no matter how powerful it is or how good his aim is. It's always there. At times like a shadow, at times like an open wound. Sometimes it sneaks up on him in the middle of the night and pins him to his bed and to his past, and to all the things he could have had. 

He stomps his way up to Shiro under the blinding sun and he can't control the volume of his voice when he demands answers like he has a right to. His concern shifts into anger, because it's easier to yell and frown and stomp than it is to cry and long and fear. 

It's easier to scream that he's not a kid anymore than it is to admit that he's terrified of losing Shiro. 

And he almost wishes Shiro would yell back, or be rude back, or tell him it's none of his business. But of course Shiro doesn't. He would never. He's never treated Keith like he's any less of a person for being a mess, or for being younger, or for being this fucking rude. It makes Keith's heart ache for reasons he can't even begin to comprehend. But it does quiet him down. The memory of the first (and, strangely, only) time he saw Shiro's electrodes on his arm flashes in his mind and it makes the hot-red anger in him cool down until everything inside him becomes an ocean-blue. He can almost feel waves crashing in his heart. 

"What are you going to do?" he asks, and fear bites at his tongue. He already knows the answer. 

Loss is a strange thing, but, for a moment, Keith can see past fear and dread and find that it's not here. It's not looming over him the way he thinks. He doesn't have to mourn Shiro, not when he's standing so close he could touch him if he only stretched his arm. He doesn't have to think of losing Shiro because he's there. He's here. He's trained for this all his life. He's the best pilot the garrison has ever seen. He's touched the sky countless times, he's reached the stars, he's become a legend. Shiro will pilot the mission to Kerberos, return to earth, and make everyone proud. There will be parades and celebrations full of life and color for him, hell, maybe schools named after him like he deserves, his name will be in history books. Keith will be proud that Shiro was the one who saved him from the dead-end his life could have been. And he will be there for Shiro, as a future colleague, or as a friend. For as long as he will have him. It's not time to mourn. 

"I'm going on the mission."

Keith is not surprised. He tries to force a smile on his face—it's Shiro's dream, after all, right at his fingertips—but he can't help the feeling of everything inside him tied into knots. 

And then, of course, the loss comes back. 

*****

Pilot error. 

It feels like a stab wound when he first hears it, surrounded by his fellow cadets who are a few months away from graduating. Iverson spits it out like he's pissed. A minute later, when the Admiral addresses everyone over speakers, her voice sounds just as mad, like she has been holding back the words "I told you so" for way too long and though she claims she's sorry for the loss, it feels as fake and calculated as the asteroid belts displayed on the screen of the simulator. 

The Kerberos mission failed. Communications were lost. The crew is presumed dead. The official ruling is that it was a pilot error. 

The way Iverson speaks Shiro's name makes Keith's blood boil. Anger grows reckless inside him and he's seeing red, he can see nothing but red, feel nothing but red, and he yells at Iverson that he's insane. He yells that the garrison is insane, that Admiral Sanda is fucking insane to think that this was Shiro's fault. Keith spits out the word hypocrites. Says the garrison and everybody in it can go to hell for not even considering sending out a rescue mission to figure out what really happened, that Shiro and Commander Holt could still be out there but they're too stubborn and stupid to do anything about it. 

"Fuck all of you and fuck this place. You're all fucking cowards. Fuck you."

In the middle of everybody's stunned silence, Keith leaves. He starts to walk out of the room, and he's vaguely aware of Iverson's voice calling after him when he starts to run. Tears are stinging his eyes and every breath he takes is more painful than the last, but he can't stop running. Down a maze of aisles and around corners, down flights of stairs, until he pushes through the main door into the morning sun. And then he keeps running. If he runs fast enough, far enough, maybe his heart will stop fighting. He doesn't stop running until he's close enough to see the cliff where Shiro took dives in his hover bike, and then, exhausted, Keith falls to his knees. He stops fighting back the tears and the painful sob that splits his throat in half. Out here, he doesn't have to hide. He never had to. 

The colors of the desert look different now, and the blue of the sky does too. They're washed out and dull. They're lifeless in this new world without Shiro. Maybe it's just Keith's eyes that have changed. 

Keith cries until he can't do it anymore, until his head is hurting and his throat feels raw. He has an image of Shiro smiling etched into his mind. The sparkle in his eyes, the slightly crooked corner of his lips, how his black hair reflected the light coming from the setting sun—when there was still color in the world. Shiro disappeared and with him he took the purples and blues and oranges of the sky, the browns and reds of the desert, all the yellow brightness of the summer sun and the vibrant green of the perfectly mowed lawn around the base. He took a piece of Keith's heart, too, and he never even knew. 

"I love you," Keith whispers with a hurt, rough voice, and he only dares to do it once. 

The desert wind carries his words away. Keith would like to think that, wherever he might be, Shiro might be able to hear them. But Keith stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago. 

He would like to spend the night out here in the desert gazing at the stars that took Shiro from him and figure out a way to forgive them. He would like to lie here on the ground, in silence, alone with his grief and his memories, and away from everybody forever. 

He hugs his knees to his chest and rests his forehead on them. There were so many times when he wanted to say something. In the safety of his mind he imagined a million scenarios where he found the perfect time and place to let Shiro know how he felt. Sometimes he had it all figured out: he would ask Shiro to talk, and Shiro would take him out here, because he always knew this was the place Keith felt most at home, ignoring that Shiro was the reason why and Keith would have felt at home anywhere Shiro was, too. He would just say it. Look at Shiro and say it. 

"I love you."

"I know you don't love me back. Not the way I do. I know you can't."

"I know you have Adam. I know you love him."

"I just wanted you to know."

"I love you so much."

"I love you."

But now Shiro will never know. Maybe it's better this way. Maybe it was a selfish thing to want to confess his love when he knew nothing would come of it, when he would just burden Shiro with it. Nothing makes it hurt less. 

There's a hand on his shoulder then. It startles him and for a split second he thinks it's Shiro's hand touching him, and the realization that that's impossible now slices another painful crack in his heart. He moves his arm away out of instinct, before he even looks up to see who it is. 

And when he does, it's Adam crouching next to him. His eyes are swollen, like he's cried for longer than Keith has known about Shiro. 

"They sent me to look for you," Adam explains, and his voice is soft in a way Keith has never heard it. 

Keith shrinks into himself almost instantly. "I'm fine."

He hopes this will make Adam leave. He really wants Adam to leave. He's the last person he would want trying to comfort him right now. 

But instead of leaving, Adam sits on the ground next to him and crosses his legs, keeping a short distance between them, and his arms just fall flaccid over his lap. He sighs and looks at the rocks and the mountains. 

"I know how hard it is for you," Adam says, but he doesn't look at Keith. And if he's aware that Keith is frowning at him, he shows no sign of it. "I know how much Takashi meant to you."

Keith almost speaks. He almost says that no, he does not know. But Adam shoots a sideways glance at him that makes him bite his tongue. The silence is deliberate from Adam's side, as if he wanted the weight of his words to truly land on Keith. 

"I know you meant a lot to him, too."

Keith breaks. Almost. 

"He talked about you a lot, you know? Always going on about how you were going to be the one to break all the records he broke first." Adam leans back a little, his face towards the clouds and his eyes hidden by the reflection of sunlight on his glasses. "Always asking me to be more patient with you and give you extensions or extra credit. You drive all of us teachers crazy. But he was always there trying to sweet talk me into giving you another chance," he says with a fond smile. 

"I know you guys used to ride bikes out here. I know he really needed that sometimes."

Keith can't help smiling. He can't help feeling the cracks in his heart expand, either. 

"He loved you, Keith. I want to try to help you, if you'll let me. For him."

There is no answer that he can think of. All he wants is to leave this stupid place behind. He wants to be left alone to hurt and grieve and to give up. He's tired of expectations. He wonders if Adam can sense it somehow. 

He doesn't know how long it is before Adam gives his shoulder a squeeze and stands up. He also doesn't know what makes him stand up alongside him, but he does. 

There is a strange tension between the two of them that Keith could cut with a knife. He's sure that Adam does know what Shiro meant to him, now, even though he won't say it. Not verbally. Just with the way he looks at him. 

He's glad Adam doesn't say anything but "I'll see you back at the base" before he leaves. 

Keith doesn't return for a while. He just keeps repeating Adam's words in his mind like a broken record. 

"For him."

He thinks he could try. For him. 

*****

There's nothing Adam can do after Keith injures Iverson. Keith has tried, he has, but he can only manage a few weeks before his pain gets the best of him. It had been bubbling up inside him anyway, watching everyone pretend to move on, pretend to forget and to be perfectly okay with the bullshit spewed by the higher ups and how they do absolutely nothing to clarify things when the media tries to drag Shiro's name through the mud and place the blame on him. The news use Shiro's youth as an excuse because they can't pin it on "lack of experience," and when that gets old they decide to focus on his disease. They claim that his health had been steadily declining and that he was fully aware that he was not fit to pilot the mission but chose to withhold information and endanger himself and his crew out of a selfish need for glory. The garrison does nothing to dispute this. It makes something snap inside Keith when he hears the word "selfish" associated with Shiro. When he hears the words "incompetent" and "irresponsible" coming from the newscast someone decided to listen to, and he knows they're all lies. They're all lying and nobody but him seems to give a shit. When they mention Shiro's "compromised" mental and emotional stability because of things happening in his personal life and some classmates start to whisper about it, he snaps. 

He can't take it. 

It's all a blur. He sits outside the commander's office again and he can hear Iverson and Adam having little less than a yelling match in front of the commander. When Iverson calls him a lost cause Adam replies that he's grieving. When Iverson starts listing the times Keith has behaved recklessly, irresponsibly, and violently in the two years he's spent at the garrison, the next thing Keith hears is silence. He hears something about having been given "too many chances" and not having Shiro there to bail out his ass anymore. Shiro was wrong in bringing him here in the first place, the commander says, and Iverson agrees, and he can't hear Adam's voice anymore. He can hear Iverson bring up his declining grades and how his performance in the simulator has gone from perfect to barely passable in just under three weeks, though. Sneaking out, damaging garrison property, getting into fights, all leading up to the blur that happened before Keith somehow ended up throwing something in Iverson's direction that wasn't really meant for him (not entirely) and injuring his eye. 

He's already turned eighteen and according to the commander that means they have no qualms about kicking his ass to the curb. He hears mumbles he can't decipher about him being lucky that Iverson is not going to press charges, and then a simple "Yes, sir," coming from Adam. 

So he leaves. He's immediately discharged and expelled from the Galaxy Garrison with no fanfare, only with a strongly worded letter and reassurance that his time there was a big disappointment, that he held the golden ticket in his hand and decided to dump it in the trash. It's nothing he didn't know. It's nothing surprising. He just wasn't meant for it—and yeah, maybe Shiro had been wrong. 

There's no one to say goodbye to him or wish him good luck that morning when he leaves. It does not surprise him either. It's always been just him since his dad died, so this is just him going back to where he should have been. That shack in the middle of nowhere. 

*****

Soon, the anger and resentment die down and that's when he knows things will be harder. He doesn't have anger to fuel him or spite to keep him moving. He has time now, so the sadness starts to creep in, along with regrets and memories and a different, more bitter kind of heartache. 

He spends a few nights unable to sleep, just thinking and wishing and breaking his own heart. Looking at the stars shine behind dirty glass framed by ripped curtains. 

He doesn't write so much, not anymore. He just imagines. 

_I saw a man today who looked like you from behind, your same height and build and the same black hair. It hurt during that second I thought it was you and it hurt even more when he turned around. It's hard to believe you're gone. It's hard to breathe._

Articles and news about the failed Kerberos mission start to die down. He stops seeing Shiro and Commander Holt’s and Matt’s faces on papers, stops seeing them on TV screens when he walks past store displays in the city, there’s no more radio talk and stupid discussions about what might have happened. He doesn’t know if it’s relief he feels, or if it’s just loss cutting deeper.

Eventually, there is no mention of the mission anymore. It’s all dead silence. 

_It kills me when you’re not here._

*****

A thing he likes about the city is that the bars he finds are small and shitty and no one gives a fuck if he sneaks in and drinks. No one asks for his ID because everyone is tired and just wants to make it through the night and forget about the day. This is not a nice city. It’s too hot and too isolated. There’s only factories and the garrison and tired people wherever he goes.

He sits at the end of the bar in a dimly lit corner and listens to the chatter and the sound of people playing pool while he drinks his beer. Keith isn’t stupid. He knows the guy at the other end of the bar has been eyeing him for a good ten minutes and attempting to maintain eye contact. At one point he was practically fellating the neck of his beer bottle. 

Keith doesn’t think much of it. The guy looks like he’s maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, he’s tall, he’s not bad looking. Blond hair and blue eyes that don’t remind him of anything. He’s boring to talk to, and it makes Keith wonder why he’s even trying with the small talk when they both know they just want someone to warm their bed for the night. It’s why Keith doesn’t try—he just kisses him like a man starved, and asks to go back to the guy’s place. 

Keith doesn’t think much of it. He kisses the guy and touches the guy and fucks the guy. Images of Shiro flashing through his mind make his kisses harder, and his touch rougher to try to ground himself and make them go away. He doesn’t want to think of Shiro anymore, but he can’t help it. He imagines kissing Shiro’s lips and Shiro’s hands around his arms, pinning him to the bed instead of this guy whose name he didn’t even care to remember. 

Keith doesn’t think much of it. He listens to the guy fall asleep when they’re done and he feels filthy and empty, but that’s something he will put away in a box and never think of again. He slides out of the bed and puts his clothes back on, and he doesn’t turn around when he walks out the door. 

Back in his own bed, he looks out the window at the night sky and sighs. 

_I’d give anything to have you back. Even for a second. Even in a dream._

*****

It doesn’t become routine, not really, but the same thing happens with two or three men over the course of five months. One time, Keith even tries to have something more. He tries to talk more. He even spends the night and lets this guy—tall and broad with a head full of sleek black hair—cook an unimpressive breakfast for him the next morning. 

Keith saves the guy’s number in his phone. Promises he’ll text him later. Walks out of there smiling, forces himself to feel a little hope that he might be able to change things. 

They go out a couple more times, they laugh, and have fun. 

After three weeks, Keith stops replying to his texts, and then blocks his phone number. It hurts when he touches him and it hurts when he kisses him, and Keith just can’t do it anymore. He doesn’t give him an explanation. He just vanishes off the face of the earth and spends his nights sleepless, scribbling, looking up at the stars.

Come back. Please come back.

*****

“I dreamt about you last night,” Keith writes in one of his notebooks after slamming his eyes open at four in the morning. Agitated, sweaty and hyper-alert. “I can’t explain it I just know I have to write it down.”

What he dreamt was Shiro’s face hidden in shadows, and his voice calling out his name. He traveled across galaxies in his dream and saw dozens of constellations he didn’t recognize. There were strings of blue lights dimming and glowing a path like a pulse in the darkness of the desert. He dreamt that Shiro came running into his arms, and, that when Keith touched him, he dissolved into purple lights, dancing in circles towards the stars.

“I don’t believe that you’re dead.”

He doesn’t know why he writes that, or why he is suddenly so sure of it. It might just be denial. Some unhealthy, delayed manifestation of his pain. He could be going insane out here with little human contact, who’s to say. But the blue lights felt warm and real, and he swore he could hear some kind of radio static when he awoke. Something in his veins telling him to search. To not give up. 

And he doesn’t.

“I’ll find you.”

*****

His heart stops when he sees Shiro lying on the table. Shiro in tattered clothes, sweating, looking ill, sedated, but alive and here. 

Shiro. 

There’s a spark ignited inside Keith’s soul almost instantly, something that makes every cell in his body awaken from a year-long slumber the second he touches Shiro’s face. There’s a scar across his face and a tuft of white hair falling on his forehead, he looks hurt and older and vulnerable strapped to the table, and Keith can’t believe they’d have the balls to dare to do this to him—but his skin is cold and real and he’s _here._

It’s true that he has tunnel vision when it comes to Shiro, but he chooses to think that that is what gets him and all the others safely out of there. It’s what makes him dive off the cliff with the confidence he didn’t have a lifetime ago, when he stood by the edge and watched in awe as Shiro did it like it was the easiest thing in the world, and started to rattle something inside Keith’s soul.  
Shiro sleeps on his bed and the guys all stay in what passes as his living room, in front of that mess of papers and charts and pictures that he’s sure make him seem like a crazy person. 

But Shiro is here. Came falling from the sky like a shooting star. 

So Keith sits outside the shack for a while, and feels his hands shaking with some leftover adrenaline. It’s not the dive that caused it, he knows. It’s having touched Shiro again without him disappearing into lights, like he did in countless dreams during the last months. He can’t make his heart slow down—for over a year now, it felt like it was just barely beating, like it was tired and only doing the bare minimum to keep Keith alive. Now it’s frantic, almost buzzing, pounding in his ear like it needed Keith to know it was alive and on fire again, trying to break out of his ribcage and into Shiro’s hands where it belonged. Where it’s always belonged. The only place where it belongs. 

Keith doesn’t know how to quiet it down. He’s not sure that there is a way. 

His memories of those years at the garrison are back in color inside him, and the image of Shiro’s smile under the sunset doesn’t make him ache this time. For some reason, he remembers the first letter he burnt that night before he dozes off to sleep. He remembers the bright colors of the fire inches away from his fingertip and the cool breeze on his cheeks, and his naïve hope that the fire would make this—his love—fade away. 

The sound of the back door creaking wakes him up, and he peeks around the corner to see Shiro walking away from the shack. He looks different now, carries himself differently; Keith doesn’t know if it’s the muscle he’s put on or whatever it was that happened during that year he was lost in space, he doesn’t know if it’s the strange-looking metal arm that makes him walk differently, or if his disease has progressed during this time. He has so many questions. They buzz and flutter around in his mind like moths around a lightbulb as he stands up to go follow him. 

Shiro has stopped, and Keith guesses that he’s just looking at the rising sun. If he has been lost in space, how comforting would a simple sunrise be? How comforting would it be to see pale blues and pink hues across the sky after being surrounded by nothing but the darkness of the universe for so long? Keith imagines it would be as comforting as finding Shiro in that tent just hours before. Shiro is his sunrise. Always has been. He always will be. 

There’s a million words he could say to explain how a part of Keith was gone with Shiro, or how the sight of the night sky didn’t bring excitement and wonder but grief and anger during this time. There’s a thousand ways he could say that it felt like a stranger’s heart was beating in his chest. That it wasn’t until he decided to start searching, setting up papers and notes and strings on a board, that Keith felt like he had something to fight for. He thinks there’s countless ways he could tell Shiro he loves him. That he’s loved him for a while now. That he never stopped. He thought before that he just hadn’t found the right time to speak those words out loud, and then Shiro was taken from him, and he went to bed every night with his regret. So he should know better. He does know better. 

But he just rests a hand on his shoulder. His words—the words he wants to say, burn at the tip of his tongue, scattered like ashes into nothingness before he can gather up the courage to say them. Like they did that night.

“It’s good to have you back.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! find me on twitter @gothshirogane and watch me ramble for hours on end about the music i listened to while i wrote this


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